John Sherman

John Sherman lived from 1823 to 1900 and was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office from before the Civil War into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both houses of the United States Congress, including nearly 32 years in the Senate, and later as Secretary of the Treasury under President Rutherford B. Hayes and as Secretary of State under President William McKinley. As a senator he was a leader in financial matters, helping redesign the United States monetary system during the Civil War and afterward working to restore the nations credit and produce a stable gold backed currency; in his later Senate years he wrote and debated legislation on immigration, business competition and interstate commerce, and was the principal author of the Sherman Antitrust Act, signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890. He was the younger brother of Union general William Tecumseh Sherman.